World War Z: The Kentucky Kingdom
by Dr-Lovekill
Summary: A group deep in the hills of Ky. ride out the zombipocalypse to form one of the most successful survival groups to come out of the war. How do they survive and try to build a society amid zombies, looters and internal strife? Please review.
1. Chapter 1: The Beginning

**Chapter One: The Beginning**

**I sit down on a soft sofa in the comfortable parlor of the large farm house. Aside from the steel bars over the windows, thick metal doors, and tactical assault rifle propped beside the antique chair across from me, the entire house, decorated in largely Victorian style, looks more like a wealthy plantation home than the center of one of the most successful groups of survivors in the United States. It's also hard to believe that the man sitting in front of me, now in his late 30's, is Drake, the legend of East Kentucky I have come to interview. His long, black hair, tied in a ponytail speaks of his partial Native American ancestry. Wearing camouflage military pants, knee-high moccasins, and a black tee shirt, he looks more out of place in his house than his house does in post-war America.**

You're thinking that I look nothing like the hardcore, zombie-killing, feudal warlord that all the rumors make me out to be, right?

**[He smiles, and I detect a hint of slyness] I've heard a lot of rumors about you, and all the stories about the small civilization you built during the war. I just wanted to hear your side of it.**

That's cool. No one's ever really asked me for the truth. Me or anyone else that would tell the truth. I guess that's why I'm up there with Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, you know. That's why I'm glad you decided to write this book about me…about us.

**So you're saying it was no big deal that you and your people survived, right?**

Oh, it was a big deal. For us at least. We had to fight for everything…food, water, _life_. But I guess you want the story from the beginning, correct? I mean, you would rather have it laid out in chronological order.

**If you don't mind.**

First off, I've read your book. Your collection of stories and anecdotes from all these people, saying how "unprepared" and panicked they were when the thing went epidemic. You talked to teachers and politicians, soldiers and suburbanites. I noticed how you failed to mention the pre-war zombie-freaks**1**, many of which actually survived.

**I'm sorry…**

No big deal. **[He gestures as if brushing away the apology]** You see, years before the war, there were groups of people who actually thought zombies might rise someday. Call us crazy, I guess we kind of were…watched too many Romero movies, I suppose. Anyway, I was one of these guys. I never took the whole "zombipocalypse" thing very seriously, but I was a survivalist by any means. Heh…I thought it would be the ChiComs**2** that hit us…that, or we'd screw the pooch ourselves. But zombies? That was always kind of a "what if" thing.

**So you were prepared for an eventual calamity anyway?**

I already had a couple years worth of food for me and my fiancée. We had gas masks, firearms, ahospital's worth of first aid supplies, and enough ammo to supply a regiment. I had already bolted bars over my windows, and installed heavy doors. I figured the more prepared we were for everything, the better the chance we had at surviving anything. I had even infected some of my neighbors with my paranoia. **[He grins again]** I had learned any kind of armed or unarmed fighting technique that taught flexibility and adaptability, rather than rigid, dogmatic moves. I had some training in everything from field medicine to guerilla tactics, from wilderness survival to hand-to-hand combat. I even trained in ninjutsu. I wasn't just some armchair Rambo either. I'd been a merc for a while, and my camping trips were like one of those wilderness survival shows that used to be on TV, so I had real world experience. I guess when the zombies came, I was more prepared to deal with it than the army**3**. I had a copy of your survival guide too, and it really gave me an edge, so I should be thanking you.

**You're quite welcome.**

Anyway, believe it or not, I was blissfully unaware of the beginnings of the epidemic. We had no TV, phone or internet at our house, and I rarely listened to the radio, if you can believe that. I was "under a rock" for a week and a half. I finally saw the news reports on TV while visiting a relative. The so called "African Rabies" was getting the limelight then. When I heard about the infected attacking and trying to eat others, my mind went straight to Defcon 5. I hit the net right away, and ignoring all the official party lines, went straight to the boards and blogs catering to survivalists. They had been gathering and posting intelligence on the situation for a week, and most of them agreed that we were looking at zombies here.

**It had to be a surprise for you.**

Barely. It's not like I was one of those yuppies in your book, caught with my pants down. I was prepared for survival, and I was trained for survival. From the time I was 16, I had eaten, breathed, and dreamed combat and survival. There was no time to feel anything. I had to make my preparations for this thing. I think my brain dredged up every tidbit of intel I had on zombies, and every rational plan I had made for the situation in about 3 seconds. I posted my ideas on the boards, hoping to aid everyone I could in remaining calm and thinking their way through it. "Get some place isolated, stockpile food and medicine, reinforce." That was the gist of my advice. I went to the site of a popular zombie-survival group, and found that they too were on code red. I knew them well, and sent a short, cryptic e-mail I was sure they would understand. It read something like "Looks like it's finally happened. Will fortify a position in East Ky. Comms limited to 30km C.B. transceiver. If overrun, bug out to my 20. Hope you don't have to send S&R. Good luck…we're all going to need it." I included my GPS coordinates.

I then gathered up every dime I had, even borrowing from relatives, and drove into town. I think I cleaned Wal-Mart out of every Mountain House meal they had, and bought enough vegetable seed to plant the county twice. I went to the local gun store and bought more .22, 12 gauge and 7.62X39 ammunition. I gave my neighbors a call…the ones whom I said actually bought into my survivalist ideas,and informed them of the situation. They too bought a good amount of seed, and gas…plenty of gas. Some of their relatives began moving into the hollow, bringing food, weapons and in the case of one guy, two muzzleloading cannons. My last stop was at the automotive store. I bought two marine batteries.

**Marine batteries?**

For backup power. I had already invested in some solar panels and batteries, and had a small solar powered backup system. Nothing big, but enough to keep a few lights on and a C.B. going if I needed it. Since my relative's house had TV and internet, and one of my neighbors had a key to our house, I had him watch the place while my fiancée and I stayed put to gather more information. We traveled back and forth for two weeks, supplying and reinforcing our house, and learning everything we could about what was happening. There was that Phalanx B.S., and the first outbreaks here in the states. The closest town had 5,200 residents, and was 120 miles from Lexington, the nearest population center. I had already planned for viral outbreaks, and knew that it would take a while for anything to reach us.

**So you weren't concerned that something might happen in your area for at least a while?**

Logically, no. But I still was as prepared as ever. I carried this everywhere. **[He holds up the assault rifle]** SKS, Soviet Design. 7.62X39 cartridge. I customized it with this AR-style stock, flashlight, laser sight, tactical scope and fore-grip. It was my favorite out of my entire collection, and turned out to be the best zombie-killing gun anyone in the group had. I probably have more confirmed kills that anyone in the state**4**. Anyway, I had taken the liberty of stringing barbed wire fences around my entire farm. I knew it wouldn't keep them all out, but would be better than nothing. Everyone else in the hollow was doing similar things to fortify their land as well. By now the cat was out of the bag, and most of my neighbors were stocking up on anything they could. Another week passed, and things started going to hell. The Great Panic broke out, and the nearby town started seeing people filtering in from Lexington and Louisville, no doubt trying to get somewhere isolated to ride this thing out…fuckwits.

**Why do you say that?**

Common sense…you have an isolated, sparsely populated area, right? And these morons all think that the best place to go is an isolated, sparsely populated area, so they all go there. Now, you have a well-known, crowded area. I lived 15 miles outside of town anyway, and everyone on the hollow had agreed we would seal the only road in from outsiders, so it still wasn't that big of a tactical SNAFU. The stores were cleaned out by now…except for the gun store…heh heh.

**What about it?**

They stayed open a while, making a ton of money off everyone buying guns and ammo. When the first outbreak happened in town, these three guys that owned the place and their families come in with trucks loaded with food and supplies, and seal the shop up like a damned fortress. You should have seenthe bodies outside that place. Zombies and people, a great, fucking wall of corpses, 12 feet high. So many people thought they could break in and take what they wanted. Too bad those bastards in the shop didn't make it, but it was like the Alamo up to the last.

But yeah, there were outbreaks in town finally. I was still running supplies and coordinating efforts to prepare my hollow. Like most survivalists, everyone around me knew me as some kind of weird gun-nut, Rambo guy. About half of them listened to me, and we were able to make a good defensive plan. I hadn't fully settled in for the duration though. I was still trying to hold out to the last, get as much information as I could, and hopefully through the net, save as many lives as I could. I saw the evacuations and refugee trains, and still have no pity for those irrational hordes of people that got themselves and their families killed because they popped off from fear and just stared running, with no idea where they were running to. The local news reported that Lexington and Louisville were now heavily infected. The first ones in the area were put down pretty quickly…probably infected people who made it here and then reanimated. Then it got worse.

I guess more infected started arriving in the area, or maybe zombies just started making in from the surrounding area. My fiancée wanted to evac to our house, but I insisted we stay put a little while longer. I wanted to be able to figure out exactly how bad it would get here, so that I could plan accordingly. I got a call from one of my neighbors. There had been two Z's in the neighborhood. They didn't last long. It was then that I decided to punch out. My fiancée and I drove back to the hollow. On the way, we passed a few of them, walking along the road. Fucking ugly things, you know? I think that's what got most people, even the soldiers and cops…fighting a person is one thing, but Z's look like something out of a horror movie.

Anyway, we get back to our house, and I called in all the neighbors who were "loyal" to me for a community meeting. I say "loyal", because we had a few bad apples in the neighborhood. Thieves, druggies, and plain bad neighbors. There were 15 people at the meeting. I threw out information, they threw out ideas, and we hammered out a plan. It seemed out of all present, nearly everyone was good at something. That was really the basis for the plan, division of labor. The government likes to think they were the first to come up with this brilliant idea, but **[smiles]** I beat them to it by a few years. Behind those closed doors, in my parlor where we're sitting now, we also hammered out the details of not only how to survive by agriculture, hunting, scavenging and whatnot, but also our defenses against zombies and looters, and…**[clears throat]**what would have to be done to insure our survival from ourselves.

**Meaning?**

Like I said, there were a lot of good people there, people who knew how to garden, how to raise livestock, how to hunt, fish, shoot, build, everything. But there were also people whom we knew would be dangerous. People who would steal, and maybe even try to kill for supplies right here among us. Redecker was a genius, so I read. Unfortunately, coming up a plan like his wasn't entirely feasible. I came up with the idea, and we put it to a vote. It was unanimous. Everyone would be given a chance to help. Those who couldn't farm or who weren't possessive of needed skills that contributed to everyone's survival would pull security. Sounds fair, right?

**Yes…**

But you'd be amazed at the reaction! People who had very little food and supplies were refusing to join the group to save their own lives! I remember, 5 of us went to one guy's house and told him of the neighborhood agreement. He blatantly refused to do anything for anyone, and threatened to shoot anyone who came near his house again. Here's a guy…with a family, being offered the chance for food, water, supplies, medical care, and security, in exchange for helping to keep his neighbors from being eaten. I said something to him to this effect, and he simply closed the door. I make it sound like a civil war. In reality, 4 people chose not to join. One had a lot of land big enough to plant and feed at least three families. We'd counted on this happening, and that's why the plan had a second part. Cut these people off completely. No aid, no supplies, nothing. The way the arrogant bastards wanted it. At least a few more actively jumped on the wagon.

It was fall. The rest of us had enough food for the winter, so the important thing for now was to post guard. The power was still on, I don't know how, unless they had found a way to guard the coal mines and power plant. Hell, it stayed on until January. That first little bit was a test for us all, a learning experience.

_**1**__**In pre-war America, several "zombie survival groups" existed **_

_**2**__**ChiCom: Slang for "Chinese Communist"**_

**3****It is a fact that the "zombie survivalists" suffered about 70% fewer casualties per 100 than the military**

**4****This title is claimed by at least 50 Kentuckians, including the famous John Lee Davis, who reportedly killed 708 zombies with a 30-06 hunting rifle and a .22 pistol, and lived in his mobile home during the entire war.**


	2. Chapter 2: The First Winter

_There were some issues with the first chapter. Apparently, I couldn't get the footnote things to work right, so I reformatted and reposted the entire chapter. Sorry for the SNAFU, but it wasn't entirely my fault. I hope everyone is enjoying the story. I am trying to stay as "real" as possible, meaning that I'm drawing alot of the content from my knowledge, training and experience in survival and combat_. It may get a little boring at some points, but in maintaining the realism of the situation, I want to tell it like it would really happen, not like some gung-ho shoot-em-up action thriller. So enjoy and review. Send me any questions about survival or zombies and I'll try to answer them.

**Chapter Two: The First Winter**

**How did it go? The first winter?**

Better than you'd think. Of course we had Z's coming in pretty regularly, but everyone stayed inside after dark, except for a four-man squad. We had four men on active duty at all times, 'round the clock, with everyone else capable of shooting a gun in reserve. Every 6 hours, they would be relieved by the next squad. Like I said, everyone that didn't have a skill was trained to be a soldier. We had eight soldiers to begin with, so we put two on each squad, and two "civilians", all armed heavily. Usually, two would carry shotguns, two had rifles, and most carried a pistol. Each man on patrol had backup weapons too. I always got a kick out of those. I know that necessity dictated what they used, but still…small shovels, crowbars, baseball bats, machetes, those were the norm. One guy had a wooden bat with these big, rusty, eight-inch nails sticking out of it like some barbarian war club. That was fucking great. He used it a few times too, and I can tell you, the effect was scarier than the zombies. **(He grins)** I carried a Japanese katana, myself. A real one, not one of those cheap dime-store things. My fiancée had one too. Before the war, I had a collection of weapons. It wasn't just limited to firearms. I had real, battle-ready swords, flails, the whole nine yards. Anyway…

When on patrol, each squad basically patrolled up and down the hollow on foot. If it was too dark to see well, we used cars until the gas ran out. A pretty good plan, actually. If they made contact, they were instructed to execute headshots while remaining out of reach of the zombies, that simple. Of course, if they opened up near someone's house, the people inside usually came out shooting too. There was usually no more than a hundred yards or so between houses, so you always had instant backup. This one time, it was Christmas Eve of all times. I was running the 1800-2400 patrol. I was captain of the guard, so of course I was squad leader that night. My fiancée was with me, and two neighbors. It's like an hour and a half before midnight, and we're near a part of the hollow that has like six houses all bunched together. We hear something coming out of the trees. A couple seconds later, a BUNCH of somethings. I switched the light on my rifle on. She turned on the light on her shotgun, and the other two turned their flashlights toward the noise. Here they came. We didn't realize, but it was part of the horde from the populated areas around us. Apparently, as we later figured out, smoke from all the chimneys and stoves were drawing them in. "Headshots! Headshots!" I yelled, and began firing, using the red dot of my laser sight. Three shotguns and a rifle are now firing. The little cluster of houses…they empty! Out comes a bunch of people, in various states of undressed, armed with everything from pistols to hunting rifles, and join in. It wasn't a few Z's….it was dozens of them! The sound of so many guns woke up everyone in the hollow in a chain reaction. You know we only lost one person that night?

**Just one?**

Yeah. And we counted and burned 287 Z's come Christmas morning. Oh, and the guy who didn't want to help his neighbors? The one who threatened to shoot us?

**Yeah?**

I don't even count him as a casualty of ours. He should have been there with us instead of trying to take on a dozen of them single-handedly. Like I said, we burned the bodies the next day. But little did we know, this was just the beginning. To the Z's, we were the highest concentration of food for hundreds of miles**5**. For the next week, we never got a moment's peace. There seemed to be a constant influx of zombies, coming in from every direction. We eventually moved everyone in the hollow onto my farm until the crisis was over. The barn loft alone housed ten people. This allowed us to set up a strong defensive position, and deal with the Z's as a group. It worked out really well…well almost.

**What do you mean?**

One guy, he wasn't too popular with anyone here before the war. He had a reputation as a thief and a drug addict. Turns out, he'd been swiping shit from everyone, and caching it at his house. I guess the idiot thought when all this was over, he was going to hock it or something, I don't know. Anyway, a couple of us caught him one night, rifling through the medical supplies. He had already pocketed some pain killers and caffeine supplements. The next day, about half of us drug him to his house, and uncovered all the stuff he'd stolen. Right there, with everyone's shit in his house, he started lying. There were a few guns that had gone missing, pill bottles, knives, and even lawn mowers, for God's sake!

**What did you do with him?**

The third part of the agreement. **[He lights a cigarette composed of tobacco grown on his farm]** We gave him his last option; He could leave with a day's worth of food and seek his fortune elsewhere, or face the penalty for his crimes. He argued and begged, but I told him to make the decision. He took a few MRE's and a wooden bat and headed off into the woods. That night, he came back. He tried to sneak a gun away from the guys sleeping in the barn loft, and got caught by a guard. Again, he denied his actions. Everyone wanted to kill him at that point, it was unmistakable. Still hoping to salvage a little humanity in light of the situation, I raised my rifle, and told him to leave the area, and never return. He said he was going back to his house. He turned, and took two steps.

**You shot him?**

What was I going to do? I had to make sure he wouldn't endanger our welfare any more, and further, I had to make an example of him. There were those in the group who had challenged my authority up to that point. Ones who said behind my back that I was unfit to command. I never heard anything of the sort after that incident. We buried him, and as we did, we buried the notions that I had any weakness, any fault that would undermine my ability to make necessary decisions.

Another week went by, and it was now January. We saw less and less of them. We realized that they did indeed freeze in the cold. Any night that dipped below 20 would see every zombie around frozen into gory fucking popsicles. That's when I came up with the idea for HK units.

**HK units?**

Hunter-Killer units. I wanted it to sound as gung-ho as possible, as if the people in the units were some kind of super, scifi zombie-destruction machines or something. It was all for morale. Everyone's morale was dropping, and a few became seriously depressed. That's dangerous thinking, and it spreads like a virus. My idea would give them a psychological boost, turn them into the hunters. Take advantage of the Z's freezing and go on the offensive instead of always being on the defensive. And it worked! These teams swept every hill within a 5 mile radius clean of Z's in a three week period. I made sure that I picked the people suffering from low morale, and stuck one of them with each outgoing team. Orders were to let them have at the frozen Z's. Perked them right up. That became a norm for us every winter; wait until a heavy freeze, then go kill every dead fuck we could. It helped control their population. We even managed to capture a few frozen ones, carefully as possible you understand, and tie them, bound and gagged to trees. We'd let the women and older children have at them.

**All for morale?**

Trapped in the middle of nowhere, trying to carry on a semblance of life, always on code red…it'll get to you after a while. That's why so many people in well-provisioned fortresses offed themselves. Survival is 90 percent mental. This was the easiest way to keep the people in my group from popping off. That's what I was trying to do…keep them happy. Keep them alive, and keep them happy. Every time a kid had a birthday, we all got together and gave them a few gifts. Somebody would kill a deer, or a couple turkeys, and I had cached a load of hard candy. We tried to make it bearable. When the power went out in the middle of January, that was the hardest thing to deal with.

Darkness…mankind's most primal fear, right? Once the power went, it got DARK. I had a gas genny, and a small solar/battery backup unit, but we couldn't use it unless absolutely necessary. We had to learn to deal with the darkness. There's not much worse than being cold, scared, and sitting in the dark, jumping at imaginary noises. But we managed. By the time February was over, we were learning to adapt to everything quite nicely. By March, we were planning a foray into the nearest town.

**5****) Actually, a larger group survived in Lexington, and a group the same size was able to ride out the war from a large warehouse in Ashland, 70 miles away**


	3. Chapter 3: Going Shopping

**Chapter 3: Going Shopping**

**Why did you have to go in search of provisions? I mean, I thought you had already supplied when it began…"**

I did. Several of us had quite a bit of supplies. But most of the others only had a few weeks worth of food, and many only had a couple boxes of ammunition. So things were stretched thin, or about to be. We planned a sortie for the next month.

**You try not to call it a raid…**

There were plenty of raiders out there, people trying to survive off what they could steal. I guess we were raiders now, but at least we were trying to survive on our own, you know? Not killing some poor scared family and taking their beans and bullets like that biker gang in Louisville. No, we already planned what it was that we needed. We needed some food for the moment, food for the future, by which I mean seeds and stuff, fuel, and ammo. We also wanted to see if there were any other groups in the area who had managed to survive.

**There were...**

Heh…You have to hand it to hillbillies. We're the most adaptable masters of improvisation in history, I think. It seemed like we were all alone, the last group of humanity in the world at times. Turns out, there were a bunch of groups in this area that held out. Some for a few months or a couple years, some for the duration. Like the Monitor and Merrimac guys. I met them a few months ago. You should interview them. Their experience was probably more interesting than mine.

**I will.**

Good. These guys, they took two huge pontoon boats, fabricated ½ inch thick steel walls for some ungodly reason, and cut shooting ports in the walls. They really did a good engineering job on these floating forts too. When they were finished, they looked like Civil War ironclads. One of them spray-painted "Monitor" and "Merrimac" on them as a joke. They cast off at the marina, with three more vessels, one pontoon, and two old fiberglass hulls filled with survival equipment and food. Took their whole families and a couple friends. These guys lived through the duration anchored in the lake, fishing and going ashore to hunt. I'm sorry, I got off track.

**It's alright. Go ahead.**

So, we take these two hulking, early 80's SUV's, and gas them up. We packed some stuff for trade, like deer meat, spam, shotgun shells and coffee. Five of us went loaded up for bear, and went out on the convoy. I led the little party myself. We communicated on CB radios.

**Why did you take five people, I was wondering.**

Good squad size. I was commander, we had a medic, two drivers, and a machine gunner, a guy with an assault rifle he had modded to be full auto. This was more for human opposition than Z's. Traveling wasn't that hard. Believe it or not, the roads were amazingly clear. I understand that in other parts of the country, cars effectively jammed nearly every road and interstate. Here, it was different. People here didn't want to bug _out_, the tried to bug _in_, so there wasn't abandoned cars choking the roads like in the cities. We got to the city fairly easily. You know, after all I had already seen…it was still the thing of nightmares. Cars sitting with their doors open, windows smeared with crimson…dead, rotting corpses lying around like paper cups. We saw a school bus half buried into an abandoned building…this all when we first drove into town.

We thought about the gun store. We drove upon it slowly, prepared to encounter the owners still inside. There were a dozen or so Z's crowded around the front, clawing at the metal bars. They were standing on a mound of dead bodies, four thick in some places, about 50 feet across. We stopped the vehicles and the drivers honked. Most of the Z's turned their attention toward us. We took them out without a problem. Now, we're standing here, trying to figure out what to do next, when a shot rings out, and a bullet strikes one of the trucks.

"Cease fire!" I yelled. "We're not looters!" I leaned my rifle against the truck and threw up my hands. The others did the same.

"Well who the hell are you?" A voice called from inside the store.

"We're just trying to scavenge some supplies for our families." I replied. "If you have any arms or ammunition you can spare, we're running low on bullets, and have some stuff we'll trade.

"What kind of stuff?" The voice asked.

"Spam and coffee if you're interested."

The owners cautiously let us in, taking our weapons as we entered. Surprisingly, there were still numerous guns left in the place. They explained that they had shut down when the virus got bad, and locked themselves in with supplies to ride it out. One of the guys recognized me, as I'd bought a few guns there. He asked how we'd managed to survive, and we told him about our hollow.

**And you traded peacefully? There was no fighting?**

Like I've explained. This wasn't like some places where desperation and plain greed drove people to do some of the things they did. These guys needed food, and we needed ammo. My wife's the quartermaster, and kept up with all the numbers. We gave them a dozen cans of spam, a can of coffee, a couple bags of dry beans, a jar of peanut butter, and a leg of deer, not to mention all the canned corn and applesauce. I gave one of the guys a pack of cigarettes, and another a pouch of chewing tobacco. We gave them a deck of cards, a harmonica, and a bible to stave off boredom, a baseball bat, some candles, and some fuel for their camp stoves. Hell, we even threw in a couple hundred bucks cash…like it was worth anything. They acted like they'd died and gone to heaven. In return, they gave us a load of ammo, a few spare mags for our .45 autos, two single-barreled shotguns, a .22 rifle, a cheap but decent quality .45 pistol, two .22 pistols, and a few arrows. The guy I knew gave me a nice AR-15, and plenty of mags and ammo. We left on good terms. I wish those guys had made it…god damn, so many good people died in this thing. If I'd known they were running out of water and food later on, I would've come back and resupplied them…but that was during the golden horde, and we had problems of our own…I don't know.

We left the gun store, and continued foraging. We knew that the stores would be empty, but one of this guy, Blaine and I had figured that the best place to get food would be the schools. And as we had figured, no one had been smart enough to fortify the school and try to make a go of it. We had it fairly easy clearing the building and getting to the kitchen. Sure enough, the high school cafeteria was stocked with enough canned food to feed us for months to come. Soups, chili, vegetables, name it. They even had a few 10 pound drums of coffee that put a twinkle in my eye. We even loaded up on toilet paper. **[He holds up his hands in a religious gesture]** You don't miss it 'till it's gone. Now, we realized the tactical error…this shit won't all fit in our blazers. It was Blaine, one of the drivers, a guy who had worked in a school before the infection, that came up with the idea to hotwire a school bus. I had to laugh. What an idea….and it worked. Didn't even have to hotwire the thing. It was just sitting there with the keys in it, and a half-tank's worth of diesel! So, we loaded it up with the supplies, and I volunteered to drive the thing.

Next stop was the farm supply store. Once again, no one had decided to do what they should've done in the beginning, and all the seed was still there. Corn, beets, beans, tomato. We took enough seed to last a few years, and some hoes, shovels, picks, things every successful farmer needs, and loaded it all into the bus. A nearby gas station allowed a couple of us to siphon gas and diesel from the tanks, while the rest engaged the Z's that came near.

**Wasn't all the gas gone by then?**

I'm sure most people thought so, and that's why we got what we did. I had worked in a convenience store before, and knew that even if the pumps were dry, a little fuel was still in the tanks. Only an inch or so, but that equated to ten gallons or more. In fact, we got fifteen gallons of gas, and ten of diesel in about 10 minutes. We really wasted a lot of ammo though. We must have shot 50 or more zombies in that time. The medic, in an act of brilliance, ran into the store, and in a couple minutes, she came out with a couple bags full of what few candy bars were left. She grabbed a few sodas and energy drinks looters had left, and for me, two boxes of cigars, and the only pack of cigarettes in the place. Driving away, we all smoked a cigar, half out of celebration, and half out of trying to get the taste of diesel out of our mouths.

We stopped at the public library too. Backed one of the trucks right up to the door. Two of us went inside while the other three secured the entrance. Now, I know what you're thinking; 'why the library?' Simple…that's where the information is. We'd already discussed this, and we needed as much information as we could get on farming, first aid, and everything else people never bothered learning before the war. And we got it. We **[clears throat dramatically]** 'checked out' every book the library had on gardening, farming, home and auto repair, electronics repair, natural medicine, first aid and health. We got books by the dozen on warfare, carpentry, pioneer living, even sewing. We grabbed some fiction books too, for entertainment. All of them were loaded into the back of the truck, and we left. It was getting too hot anyway. Every Z within two miles was homing in on our location like SCUD missiles from hell. We plowed through a bunch of them on our way out. The last stop was when we ran across the remnants of a police roadblock. Three police cars and a van sitting across the road. I radioed the lead truck, and told them to stop. Quickly as possible, we searched the cars, and found a shotgun, two flashlights, first aid kits, some 9mm rounds, and the police radio out of one of the cars. Since emergency responders work off the same freqs, we wanted to hear if anyone was in the area.

When we got back to the hollow, we'd might as well have been old Saint Nick with a bag of toys. Everyone acted like it was a party. **[He smiles]** Best thing for morale we ever had. Everyone was feeling pretty damned glum up until this point, and now they acted like we could survive anything. You'd better believe that I capitalized on it, too. I stood at the back of the vehicles, throwing candy and soda pop out to the kids and the women. I handed out the new ordnance to the couple of people who didn't have firearms of their own yet. I kept the AR and the Red Bulls for myself of course…heh. Being leader has its perks. **[His sly grin appears again]** We loaded all of the food into the food bunker in my house, and all of the first aid stuff we'd found into the room I had made into an infirmary. The books all went into my library, where most of them are to this day. **[He motions toward a door across the room]** I've since added more volumes, scavenged from all over the county. Largest private library in the area now. People come from miles around for research and learning. Who would have thought that I would end up reviving the library system after the war? Hell, who would've thought I would've been responsible for keeping civilization alive in the middle of what was once one of the most uneducated areas in the country? (6)

Now, it was close to planting season, and everyone started making preparations to begin something that hadn't been seen in over a hundred years, an agrarian based society.

**6: Before the war, Appalachia ranked lowest in the country in academics, and highest per capita of high school dropouts **


End file.
